this, Miss Eppendorfer was not able to make any further objection to Frankie’s study.
“I may as well tell you now,” said Frankie, “that I shan’t—I couldn’t stay with you after you’re married to that man.”
“But it won’t be for a long time,” Miss Eppendorfer protested.
A very long time indeed! Dimly, in her muddled head, she realised how much she wanted and needed Frankie, even foresaw the day when Mr. Kurt Hassler would go the way of other men to whom she had been so generous, and she would be quite alone. She tried to bribe her not to learn shorthand, she didn’t want her to be able to find another place; she said it would tire her, hurt her eyes, everything she could imagine.
Frances was firm.
“You’re not alone in the evenings now,” she said, “and I’ve got to think of my own future.”
“I’ll always look after you”
“I don’t want to be looked after, thank you. Please don’t be unreasonable!”
Miss Eppendorfer cried a little and consented.
Frances found it a curious experience. She wrote home to Minnie, after the first week:
“I’m a sort of grandmother here in the business school. All the rest are little girls with pigtails and hair ribbons, and little boys in short trousers. You can imagine how I feel, so old and sedate. And even in size! They’re all so stunted. I tower above my tiny desk. I’m taller even than any of the teachers, and quite a different colour, at least five degrees redder.
“I thought I knew something about typing, but I’ve had to start all over again, and learn the ‘touch system.’ And shorthand! Oh, Minnie! I’m so stupid, you can’t think. The others learn like eager little trained animals. They can’t speak decently, or spell, of course, but what does that matter? They can put down on paper what they hear someone say, and copy it off, without the trouble of understanding. I foresee that I shall be here for years while all the little boys and girls pass on and out, and become bank presidents.”
It was quite true that she wasn’t quick at learning her new trade. She was studious by nature, and painstaking, but her hand was not ready. She was more discouraged than she cared to tell.
Life seemed, just then, a rather miserable affair. Her ambition was balked by her slowness in learning, and she began to think that she would never be able to do better than she was doing with Miss Eppendorfer. A filler of odd jobs, employed principally because she was personally agreeable.... And, somehow, Miss Eppendorfer’s talk of love made her lonely and sad. She thought of her twenty-three years, and was terrified by the fear that she would never be loved. She longed so to be loved! What chance, though? She went from Miss Eppendorfer’s flat, which no man entered but “Kurtie,” to the night school, where the oldest male was perhaps nineteen.
A situation ripe for the coming of the hero. As usual he came. Or perhaps, the one who came had to be he....
It was the end of June, and after two months of effort, Frankie still sat among the beginners. She had developed a new trouble. She was able now to scratch desperately while the teacher dictated, almost keeping pace with her, but she could never afterward read what she had written. She was trying in vain to type a letter she had taken down, in which all she could distinguish was “Dear Sir:” and the “14th inst.” when she heard someone sit down in the seat next her, which had till then been vacant. Naturally she glanced up. It was, as she later wrote to Minnie, a “real grown-up human being,” a tall, thin fellow with a haughty, stupid face, a man who couldn’t be under thirty and who was dressed in well-fitting and expensive clothes. She couldn’t help staring at him, all the more because he took no notice of her at all. “He was so out of place there,” she wrote. “He was so well-bred, with the nicest thin brown hands. And, my dear Minnie, he was even stupider than me. Much stupider.”
She watched him a great deal, as he tried to write on his machine. The keyboard was hidden with a tin cover, so that he was obliged to learn the letters by memory; this puzzled and annoyed him, and he frowned severely over his chart.
“I say!” he said, suddenly, to Frances, with a marked English accent, “Isn’t there something wrong about this thing? B ought to come next to A.”
She explained that the keyboard wasn’t arranged alphabetically. He asked why not, and she said she didn’t know.
“Some American idea, I suppose,” he observed, with displeasure, and turned away to resume his struggle.